Monday, June 06, 2005

The politics of .xxx

Now that pornographers have a domain name suffix reserved exclusively for them, look for politicians to become more eager than ever before to target sexually explicit Web sites.

Last week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approved the creation of .xxx, a kind of virtual red-light district that's scheduled to go live by the end of the year.

Permitting sexually explicit material online is, of course, only objectionable among advocacy groups that would love to outlaw anything as daring as "Heather Has Two Mommies." (Nobody is forced to click on links pointing to raunch and ribaldry, after all.)